As a veterinary practice manager, you likely have daily tasks that include scheduling and coordinating appointments, creating and maintaining workflows, making sure all the necessary supplies are available, interacting with all the different practice stakeholders, and overall ensuring that things are moving smoothly.
Running your practice takes a great deal of time and effort, and errors can cause you to take even more time to complete tasks, reducing your efficiency. Therefore, it is vital to be aware of the potential mistakes that you might be making and how to avoid them.

Five common veterinary practice management mistakes to avoid

1. Not having a proper storage system
Your practice probably deals with patient files, test and imaging results, prescriptions, and many other kinds of information on a daily basis. It is essential to have a system that will enable you to store these files and retrieve them when you need them. Not having a central place to store files or a system for naming those files can make it challenging to retrieve images when required. It can disrupt workflows and reduce efficiency.
Create an efficient storage platform and system to help streamline your workflow.
2. Lacking uniform reporting styles or templates
If all the people interacting with patient files have different reporting styles, there might be a lack of uniformity, which might make the work look disorganized and cause you to spend an extensive amount of time just putting the information together.
Develop a reporting system or use an existing one that all your practice stakeholders can follow.
3. Not correctly harnessing the power of technology
Various practice management, image management, and workflow automation software are available for you as a practice manager. Not using them and only depending on manual processes can make your practice slow and inefficient.
4. Failing to properly delegate responsibilities
Don’t fall into the trap of trying to do everything by yourself. Automate or outsource the tasks that you can.
5. Having poor marketing/publicity
Get word of your practice out there! You might have fantastic staff, but clients must be made aware of them and your clinic. Organize community outreach activities, place fliers and posters in public places, and let people know about your business.

How to avoid these common mistakes

Now that you are aware of the veterinary practice management mistakes to avoid, let’s talk about how to do so. Asteris is a company that focuses specifically on the needs of veterinary practices. The Asteris Keystone Suite is a complete, end-to-end solution for many veterinary practice management needs. Integrating this suite into your practice can help streamline your activities and improve your efficiency. The ways that it can help you include the following.
Image handling
Veterinary practices work extensively with radiological images, so it is crucial to have a robust system in place to store, transfer, and share these images. The Asteris Keystone online app provides you with remote and mobile access to your images, reports, and other files from any platform or device, anytime, anywhere. This will help improve your workflow.
It also comes with an integrated Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) image viewer, enabling you to review and diagnose DICOM images. You can easily share both DICOM and non-DICOM files and images with multiple facilities, colleagues, referral partners, and clients for review and interpretation.
The best thing about the Asteris Keystone picture archiving and communication system (PACS) is that it can be seamlessly connected to your diagnostic equipment, radiology information system, and practice management software. This way, all your information can be stored in one place.
Data storage
In addition to locally storing your images, Asteris PACS enables you to automatically archive and secure your data on the cloud-based platform. This ensures that your data is always safe.
Reporting
Asteris has pre-designed report template and custom template capabilities to ensure uniformity and coherence no matter how many people are providing reports. You will not have to gather reports from different people and place them in one document. Everyone can simply access the report and work on it directly in real time.
It can even help you reduce the time that you spend on reporting by providing pre-made templates, enabling you to create custom templates, and supporting speech-to-text conversions.

Conclusion

Knowing these veterinary practice management mistakes to avoid and putting in place the means to do so can help make your already great practice into an amazing one!
Here at Asteris, it’s our goal to help veterinarians make sound medical decisions with ease, clarity, and confidence by giving them the tools and insights that they need to optimize the way they work.
If you’re ready to stop feeling like there’s not enough time in your day, we can help you optimize your imaging processes and the way you work. Contact our specialists today to get started!